Something in her voice gives me the feeling she is talking about more than just the house. “When you know, you know,” I assure her, resting my palm lightly against her lower back. “And if it’s really the one for you, it’ll be there when you’re ready. Now, I think I see what looks like some very filthy gutters.” I point to the roof of the house ahead of us. “Not liking this one already, but let’s take a look. Maybe we’ll find some proof that your gut is right and you’ve already found the one.”

  By the time we finish looking at every house on the list, it’s a lot later than I expected. In the driveway of the last house, Juniper has a full meltdown. She’s eaten snacks from the diaper bag, had water and another diaper change, but even Eden looks a little tired and flustered.

  “I’m starving,” she says. “And you’ve got to be too.” She looks at her watch and bounces Juniper against her hip. “I’d wanted to make one more stop before going back to the hotel, but I don’t think Junie’s got it in her. Do you mind if we head back?”

  My stomach growls. “Can we stop for some food along the way?”

  She nods, thanks Taylor for all the work today, and then bustles off toward the SUV.

  I click the fob to unlock the vehicle and turn to shake Taylor’s hand. “Thanks for letting me tag along,” I say. “It was nice meeting you.” I’m turning to head out when Taylor calls my name.

  “Vito,” she says, then looks toward Eden, who is coaxing a very cranky baby into her car seat. “I think Eden really liked that first house. What do you think?”

  I nod. “It’s her call, but no doubt that house will make a great home. Well maintained, move-in condition. Upstairs bathrooms could use a remodel at some point, but nothing she couldn’t live with for a couple years. If she makes a decision, I’m sure she’ll let you know.”

  Taylor nods. “A house like that won’t stay on the market long.” I’m not sure why she’s telling me this, but then, of course, she drops the bomb. “You know, if your credit is an issue, we have programs. I work with a lot of mortgage brokers, and we’ll find a way. There’s no reason why the two of you can’t make this happen.”

  I bark out a laugh. “Thanks for that,” I say. “But my credit’s just fine, not that it matters since I won’t be buying the house. But I’ll pass that along to Eden.”

  Taylor looks confused, like even though Eden said we were just friends, she doesn’t believe I won’t be moving in to the house with her. But she just says okay and shoves a handful of business cards at me. I didn’t think people used business cards much anymore, but I take them, thank her again, and head over to the truck.

  Juniper is in full scream mode, with tears on her red face and her lower lip trembling, coated with drool, she’s so worked up.

  I’ve seen epic meltdowns like this before, so I know the best thing to do is let Mom tell me what she wants. I press my hand to Eden’s lower back. “Can I help?” I ask. “Jokes? Take her for a walk? We don’t need to get in the car right now. Whatever she needs, we do.”

  Eden looks at me with gratitude all over her face. She looks flustered too. “Thanks,” she says, “but I think she’s tired. I should have paid closer attention to the time. We missed her nap by about an hour. I’m going to ride in the back with her if you don’t mind playing chauffeur.”

  “Absolutely. Go around. I’ll hang with her until you’re in.”

  While Eden runs around the rear bumper to climb into the seat behind the driver, I look down at sad little Juniper. My heart tightens physically in my chest at the misery on her cute face. She’s obviously worked up and overtired if she missed her nap, but I can’t help wanting to do something.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I say, reaching a hand out to her. I don’t do anything, just reach my fingers toward her, and Juniper surprises me by lifting her arms up and screaming a very easy-to-understand word.

  “Up. Up.”

  I look helplessly at Eden, who is climbing into the back seat. “What do I do?” I ask. “She wants up?”

  Eden sighs. “Yeah, I’m sure she does.” She looks at Taylor, who’s staring at us through the window, and waves. “You know what, get her up. She’s had a long day, and she’s wrecked. Maybe she’ll calm down a bit if we just let her settle.”

  With Juniper continuing to scream, I reach into the back seat, unbuckle her safety belt, and pick her up from the car seat. She flops against my shoulder, her little mouth biting into my shirt.

  “Oh God.” When Eden comes around and sees Juniper’s basically gone vampire on me, she runs back to the car for the diaper bag. “Teething,” she says. “Poor kiddo. I’ll bet she’s in pain.” She comes back to the passenger side of the car with a little plastic bottle in her hands. “These are organic teething tablets. They’ll dissolve against her gums and give her a little relief. Can you hold her while I do this?”

  “Yep.” I’ve seen this before, but never up close and personal. It’s actually really heartbreaking. She’s got to be in some kind of pain, but the second her mom puts her fingers in Junie’s mouth, the crying eases. A little white froth bubbles on her lips, but true to Eden’s prediction, just having some fingers to bite on seems to calm Juniper down enough to stop the screaming.

  “There we go,” I say, keeping my voice calm and cheerful. “You got this, kiddo.”

  Once Juniper seems a little more settled, Eden takes her from me. “I’m going to walk a sec,” she says.

  She takes off at a nice brisk pace down the sidewalk, patting Juniper’s back and letting her grind her mouth against her shoulder like she did to me. I close the doors, lock the car, and catch up to them, walking alongside Eden. We don’t say anything; I just keep pace while she coos to her daughter.

  “Good way to check out the neighborhood,” she says, throwing me a look. “I’m sorry, Vito. I know we’re both starving. What a disaster.”

  I shake my head. “This has been a pretty perfect day in my book,” I say. “No fires, no MVAs. I think I can handle running support on a teething meltdown.”

  “MVA?” she echoes.

  “Motor vehicle accident,” I explain.

  She nods, and as we approach the end of the third block, Juniper has quieted down a lot. We slow our pace, and by the time we get back to the car, Juniper is almost asleep on Eden’s shoulder.

  She gently sets her daughter back in the car seat, and I watch as her drowsy eyelids blink fast, her thick eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks.

  I always thought I’d have kids someday. I thought I’d end up having them with Michelle. But I could see being somebody’s dad like this. What I can’t imagine is giving up on a kid that I have, even if shit didn’t work out with the baby momma.

  My gut clenches when I think about my divorced friends. My sister’s husband is a widower, so she didn’t have to navigate any issues with an ex-wife, the birth mother of her stepkids. If anybody could do it, Gracie could.

  What if Juniper’s father is still in the picture? I don’t know how cool I’d be sharing a kid with a deadbeat dad. But before I jump to judgment, I’ve got to remind myself that not everyone has a family like mine. I don’t know if Eden even has parents.

  “You mind if I ride in back with her?” Eden’s got Juniper strapped in.

  I don’t reply because of course I don’t mind. I wait for her to get in, then I close Juniper’s door as Eden gets settled in the back seat, climb behind the wheel, belt in, and head back to Eden’s hotel.

  “So,” I say softly as we’re pulling away. “I told you my story. Now a good time for yours?”

  Eden chuckles softly. She leans back against the clean leather and closes her eyes. “Take me someplace I can buy you a burger and fries, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “Deal,” I say, then head toward downtown Star Falls.

  8

  Eden

  The burgers from Betta Burger are better than anything I’ve ever had. The fries are thick, with the skins still on and loads of salt. The patty is perfectly seared but juicy, and the fixings are crisp, fresh, and loaded between a perfectly baked bun.

  Vito parked and went inside to order, figuring that the shouting into the drive-through speaker would wake up Junie. He’s already finished his burger and fries and is working his way through a peanut butter and chocolate shake while I dip the last of my fries into a tiny dollop of ketchup.

  “Come on, you got to taste this.” He twists in the driver’s seat and holds the cup over the center console. “Just take a sip. I promise I don’t have cooties.”

  I shake my head and think it’s already too late for that. I kissed the man just a few minutes ago. It’s not a big leap to take a sip from his straw.

  I grab the cup and start with a little taste, but I quickly suck down a big mouthful. “Oh my God,” I mutter. “What the heck do they put in these? I might have to fight you for the last few sips.”

  Vito holds his hands up in surrender. “You finish it. I know better than to come between a woman and the best shake in Star Falls.”

  I take two more long sips and then hand it back to him. “I’m done,” I say. “I don’t need that much sugar in my life, but that’s good.”

  He slurps the last of the shake then bags up his trash. “I know, right? You need an unofficial tour guide through the best food in Star Falls, I’m your guy.”

  He holds out a hand, and I give him my burger wrapper and the little waxy bag that has been completely cleaned of any evidence that hand-cut fries were once inside.

  Once my belly is full, I lean back against the seat and sigh. “Thank you,” I say. “For lunch. For coming with me today. For all of this.”

  Vito fires up the truck and looks at me in the rearview. “You bought lunch,” he reminds me. “Everything else was my pleasure.”

  He pulls out of the parking lot of the burger place, and I watch little Junie as she sleeps. Her mouth is open, her lips still shiny with a bit of drool. Thank goodness I have teething toys in the freezer back at the hotel. I have a feeling we’re going to need them.

  “We got enough time for that story you were going to tell me?” Vito’s smiling, but the fact that he’s bringing it up again has my stomach suddenly doing flips.

  I lace my fingers together and squeeze tight. I can give him the sanitized version of the story I gave my aunt, but I have a feeling he’s going to want more. More that I just don’t know I can offer. But something about the smirk covering that sexy face loosens my defenses.

  I can open up.

  Nathan can’t hurt me or Junie.

  Not as long as I don’t break the rules.

  “Yeah,” I sigh. “Okay. So, my daughter’s father… The short version is he wanted nothing to do with a child. When he found out I was pregnant, he was happy to help me solve the problem as long as it had nothing to do with him.” I can see in the mirror that Vito’s lips have gone thin, but he looks straight ahead at the road and just listens.

  I appreciate that he’s not interrupting me with questions or reactions, but I almost wish he would. I’d rather tell him the things he wants to know than just leave me to share, but he’s not interrupting so I rush on to fill the silence.

  “I told him I was going to have the baby and I planned on keeping her. After that, lawyers got involved, and we worked out an agreement. It’s actually pretty unusual.” This is where I stop and bite my lip. I told my aunt some of this, but not nearly all there is to tell.

  “Okay,” he says slowly. “Does he visit her? Get pictures?”

  I shake my head. “No, nothing like that.” I rub my forehead and suddenly wish we weren’t doing this in the car. I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat, and it feels like I’m confessing my sins in one of those boxes like I was forced to do for a while in Catholic grade school.

  I can’t tell how close we are to the hotel because Vito hasn’t punched the address into the GPS, so I figure I might as well keep going. If he doesn’t want anything to do with me after this, well, it’s probably better I know before I go off and kiss the man again.

  “Vito,” I say quietly. “Some of the details of what happened are sort of confidential. I haven’t even told my aunt everything.”

  He immediately looks into the rearview and meets my eyes. “What do you need me to do? Spit oath? Blood? I was never a Boy Scout, but if there’s something I’ve got to swear to, I’ll swear to it. You can trust me with anything, Eden.”

  The sparkle in his eye makes me giggle. “A spit oath? Is that a thing?”

  He cups his palm like he might actually spit in it, but then he grabs the steering wheel. “Fuck if I know. Point is, you can trust me. I’ve got no reason to tell anybody your business, Eden. The only reason I want to know is so I know whose knees I’ve got to crack or if I’ve got to break some bones for you. Some ex shows up you don’t want around, some deadbeat bails on child support…” He lifts a thick brow at me. “We Bianchis take care of our own.”

  We take care of our own…

  Am I theirs? His? I have been going to weekly ladies’ brunches and hanging out with the Bianchis more than I used to spend time with my friends in LA—if you could really call the people I worked with and occasionally did dinners and happy hours with my friends.

  I decide not to think too long about his choice of words but focus on what he’s really asking.

  “We signed an agreement,” I explain. “It’s a confidential agreement, which is why I don’t talk about it much. Basically, he gave up all parental rights to Juniper in exchange for money. His lawyers set up a fund that will pay me a modest annual income so I can live off the money until she is older. There’s also a small amount put away in a separate trust so she can have a head start on college or culinary school, trade school, or just to travel if she wants when she turns eighteen.”

  He nods slowly but asks only one question. “No parental rights. What does that mean?”

  “He’s out of her life for good. And mine too. No visits, no emails, no holiday cards.”

  “He basically bought you off.” Vito sounds disgusted. He grumbles something under his breath, and I start to feel too hot.

  This was a mistake.

  I told him too much, and this isn’t even half of it.

  “Vito, I know how it sounds.”

  “Whoa. I’m not judging you, babe.” He looks at me in the mirror, his face severe. “You’ve got a baby to raise, and you’re how old?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  He sighs. “Fuck. You had a job before? You got a degree or student loans and shit?”

  I shake my head. “That’s part of the problem. I didn’t go to college. And Juniper’s dad was my boss.”

  “So, he bought you off on a sexual harassment suit too? I’m sorry, Eden. I don’t know if you loved this guy or what, but he sounds like a Grade A douchebag with a capital fucking D.”

  I lower my head and close my eyes. Did I love Nathan? My answer to that is so easy, but it makes me feel even shittier.

  “I never loved him.” I almost whisper it. “God, Vito.” I tug my fingers through my hair. “Do you know what it’s like to be so out of your depth? You probably don’t. You have a great family. You’re loved. You have people.” I think back over the series of stupid decisions that brought me to LA, and maybe it’s the fact that I’m in the back seat of the car and I can’t look at Vito.

  Maybe this is like some kind of confession or therapy session. Or maybe it’s just the first time anyone has shown a real interest in what I’ve gone through, but I just start talking.

  And once I start, I’m shocked how good it feels to let some of this go.

  “What we had wasn’t love,” I say. “It was confusion. I was so lost in LA.” I look out the window at the green lawns and mature trees, the clean streets and perfect sidewalks. Star Falls is literally a world away from where I’m from. “You’ve probably heard a little about my childhood from my aunt. My dad left me, and my mom died in prison. She was locked up for attacking a boyfriend with a hammer. And when Mom got sent away, her druggie boyfriend took responsibility for me.”

  Vito jerks the truck, but he quickly rights us. “Sorry,” he growls. And it is a growl. “Did the boyfriend mistreat you?”

  “No. Actually, Mom going away seemed to calm Bruce down a bit. He cleaned up his act and left me totally alone. I went to school, cooked for myself, cleaned the apartment. He got himself clean for a little while, but he definitely didn’t want to be somebody’s stepdad. He worked when he could and actually kept food in the house. Paid the bills.” I bite my lip at the memory. Mac and cheese in a box isn’t food to some people, but during the eighteen months Bruce lived with me, I never went to sleep hungry.

  “That didn’t last long,” I continue. “Ma passed in prison. She had an appendicitis attack but didn’t get medical attention fast enough. And then one day, when I was seventeen, Bruce packed up his shit while I was at school. He left me a hundred dollars in cash and told me the rent was due on the first or I’d have to pay a penalty.”

  My eyes start to sting when I think about what happened next. How scared I was to be alone. “I’d gotten used to Bruce,” I say quietly. “He wasn’t family, but he didn’t do anything bad. But as soon as he was gone, I needed to figure out how to pay the rent, how to buy groceries. That was when I decided to try to find my dad. Of course, that was impossible, but I did find my aunt, Shirley. She’d never stopped sending me birthday cards and letters over the years. When I told her Mom died and Bruce had left, Shirley came to my apartment. I begged her not to call child services. The last thing I wanted was to be put into foster care at seventeen.”

  Vito pulls into the parking lot of the hotel and turns off the car. He faces forward, his head lowered. “Go on,” he urges.

  “Well, the rest is pretty simple,” I tell him. “Aunt Shirley paid the rent on my apartment until the day I turned eighteen. After that, I decided I wanted to move someplace that I picked. Someplace that I wanted to be. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But I’d spent so much of my life living with people who didn’t want me, in places I didn’t want to be, I picked the most glamorous, exciting, fun place I could imagine. The City of Angels.”